


you drove that train (right through my heart)

by potato_writes



Series: i'm standing right here on (jaime's) side [5]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Break Up, F/M, It's temporary though don't worry, Non-Linear Narrative, Quasi-Ocean's Eleven AU, it will get better but this part is Sad, jaime appears in this but does absolutely nothing because he's asleep, this part brought to you by me yelling about the importance of friendships between women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:15:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27512161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potato_writes/pseuds/potato_writes
Summary: Brienne has no idea how long she’s been sitting here watching Jaime sleep next to her, but she has a gut feeling that it’s been far longer than she’d originally intended it to be. She should have left hours ago, as soon as he fell asleep, yet she’s still here, still watching him in a way she’d probably find creepy if her heart wasn’t in the process of shattering inside her chest.It’s a shame she has to leave, because Jaime’s sobeautifullike this, quiet and still for once as he slumbers, the lines of his face smoothed and serene, one hand stretching out in her direction after she pulled away from him to dress and prepare for this, the hardest thing she’s had to do in preparation for their upcoming heist.*as the heist approaches, Brienne must make the most difficult decision of her life in order to ensure her team's success.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: i'm standing right here on (jaime's) side [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956802
Comments: 20
Kudos: 31





	you drove that train (right through my heart)

**Author's Note:**

> look I'm sorry about this part it made me sad too. but things WILL work out for them eventually, so don't get too worried about it. chronologically this takes place after part 4 and part 2, but before part 3 and part 1, because I enjoy the confusion of a non-linear timeline. also jaime shows up in this part! he doesn't do anything but he's here! it's a minor miracle because he really has not done a lot in this story so far!
> 
> come find me on Tumblr as [potatothecat](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/potatothecat). enjoy and thank you for reading!!

Brienne has no idea how long she’s been sitting here watching Jaime sleep next to her, but she has a gut feeling that it’s been far longer than she’d originally intended it to be. She should have left hours ago, as soon as he fell asleep, yet she’s still here, still watching him in a way she’d probably find creepy if her heart wasn’t in the process of shattering inside her chest.

It’s a shame she has to leave, because Jaime’s so _beautiful_ like this, quiet and still for once as he slumbers, the lines of his face smoothed and serene, one hand stretching out in her direction after she pulled away from him to dress and prepare for this, the hardest thing she’s had to do in preparation for their upcoming heist.

In some other life, she thinks, things could have been different. In some other life, where he wasn’t the son of the man she’s trying to take down, where she never had to give up her dreams to save her island, they might have met, could have fallen for each other just as quickly as they did in this one. She could have taken him to Tarth, could have shown him all her haunts from childhood, could have introduced him to her father and the rest of her family—they might as well be alive, if she’s going to change everything like this. In some other life, they could have been together, could have been happy.

But that’s not for them, it seems. Instead, they live in this world, where she’s about to flee in the middle of the night, too afraid to face him and properly break it off. In this world, they’re on opposite sides of a conflict he doesn't realize exists, and there’s no way she can reconcile her desires with the cause she fights for, with the need to protect her island, protect so many others from what Tywin Lannister might do next. 

It’s been a long, agonizing decision, but she’s realized she can’t stay with Jaime, can’t lead this double life where she’s alternating between fucking him and working against him and his family. She’s not Margaery or Arianne, both skilled liars who could have carried on the illusion for years and years. Instead, she’s the fool who fell for Jaime Lannister without considering the consequences until it was far too late.

Which brings her to here and now, where she’s sitting beside his slumbering form with tears burning in her eyes, knowing she needs to leave before she convinces herself not to. No one else on the team has told her she needs to do this, but she sees it in their eyes, in the pitying looks that Sansa and Ygritte exchange when they think she can’t see, in the painful understanding in Shae’s eyes whenever Jaime’s name comes up in conversation. Only Joy, sweet Joy, remains judgement-free, and her opinion is too biased to truly count.

She _has_ to do this, no matter how much it hurts, no matter that she’ll be leaving half her heart behind when she does. Jaime can never know what she’s doing, can never learn the truth behind the ‘business meetings’ that take her away from him so often, can never meet the teammates she’s begun to call friends after months of working together. And he won’t be content with excuses forever. 

He’ll recover from this, she’s sure. He’s too beautiful and brilliant to remain bound in one place for long, and her memory has never been enough to hold anyone back from moving on. There’ll be some other woman, at some other bar, and he’ll forget the time he spent with her quickly enough. 

Men like him always do.

That doesn’t alleviate the guilt she feels about sneaking out like this, though she tries. It’s a horrible thing to wake up alone when you didn’t fall asleep that way. Jaime doesn’t deserve that, not after he’s been so kind to her, tolerating all of her doubts and fears and secrets and lies despite the uncertainty she sometimes sees in his eyes, after she’s brushed him off one too many times because of planning or a need to pick up a key item, meet someone to get a crucial tidbit of information.

He never said that her denials hurt him, but she saw. She knows. And she knows this will hurt him just as much, waking up to find her gone, with nothing more than a hastily scrawled note to explain it to him.

 _That’s cruel, Brienne,_ Margaery had said when they’d sat together at the long wooden table and she’d laid out her plan in a shaking voice, refusing to meet her friend’s eyes. _Lannister or no, he doesn’t deserve to be walked out on like that. You could at least explain it to him in person, even if you don’t tell him the truth._

The truth she didn’t tell Margaery is that she wouldn’t be able to leave if she faced him in the light of day and did this. She can barely handle the _thought_ of his wounded expression, his voice softly asking _what did I do wrong, Brienne, how can I fix this, how can I fix us_. How could she possibly hope to confront it?

She makes to get up, to leave, but then he sighs softly in his sleep and rolls towards her, and she can’t, she _can’t_ , she should never have done this, should never have returned to that bar and said _yes_ when he’d looked at her with so much hope shining in his eyes, should never have kissed him, fucked him, walked side by side in the park with him and laughed at the antics of children on the playground together. 

She should never have decided to leave him like this, asleep and beautiful and far too tempting in the soft light of his apartment at midnight.

But she cannot stay, either.

None of the others would say it to her face, of course. They’re her friends, and even Ygritte and Asha at their most caustic have held their tongues on this matter. But she’s distracted, she _knows_ she’s distracted, and she can’t afford to be. The plan can’t afford for her to be off her game. And every time Arya and Sansa exchange dark looks at the mention of Jaime’s name, or Arianne texts her saying _hey, where are you, it’s getting late,_ or Shae smiles at her sadly because she knows how it feels to be tangled up with a Lannister, she remembers.

She has a duty, to her friends, to her island, to her family. Jaime doesn’t fit in with that, doesn’t fit in with any of her carefully laid out plans or the life she thought she’d be living. He doesn’t fit with _anything_ , really, too golden and shining to be just another person on the street, too kind and gentle to be a proper Lannister—something he’d told her once, the bitterness in his voice impossible to deny.

Maybe that was a sign that he was never hers to keep, not for very long anyways. Nothing good has ever stayed in her grasp for long. There’s no reason why Jaime would be the exception to the rule.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him quietly, pressing her lips to his forehead before she can stop herself. “I really am, Jaime. This…this isn’t how I wanted to end things. But…I can’t stay.”

She pulls away before she can think about it any more, leaving behind a folded piece of paper on the pillow that’s become _hers_ over the last few months, knowing that he’ll see it when he wakes and understand in an instant where she’s gone, what she’s done.

 _Quick and easy,_ she’d told Margaery while sitting in the kitchen. _I don’t have to confront him, and he can’t try to stop me. It’ll be over just like that._

Even then, she’d known she was lying. There’s nothing quick or easy about this as she closes the door of his apartment behind her and walks as quickly as she can to the elevator, pressing the down button unnecessarily hard as if it’s the thing that told her to leave. She doesn’t look back, because she won’t be able to do this if she does.

Her eyes burn the entire way down to the ground floor, but she doesn’t let herself cry even as she steps out onto the street and makes her way back towards the warehouse and the others. _You brought this on yourself, you know. You should never have gotten involved with a Lannister, of all people._

Margaery and Arianne are sitting at the table when she slips inside, talking in low voices and pretending they haven’t been waiting up for her. Everyone else appears to be in their rooms, but she knows they’re lurking somewhere nearby, waiting to see what’s happened, if she’s done what she set out to do tonight.

“Well?” Margaery asks her, far more gently than she’s used to from her friend. “How did it go?”

She really does intend to respond, even goes so far as to open her mouth in preparation to brush their concerns off, but then she remembers Jaime smiling at her in the sunlight their first morning together, and she bursts into tears instead.

“Oh, Brienne, honey, no,” she hears Arianne say, and then she’s wrapped up in someone’s arms while they make soothing noises as she sobs against their shoulder. Somewhere in the background, a door slams against the wall, and she hears Sansa ask Margaery about what’s going on. They murmur in low voices above her head as she continues to weep against Arianne, unable to stop herself as all the emotions she’s been bottling up for the last month at _least_ come tumbling out of her.

She’s not sure how long she cries for, but it’s long enough that Sansa’s retreated once again and Margaery’s the only one sitting at the table when Arianne finally guides her over to sit down. Joy materializes out of the kitchen and sets a steaming cup of tea in front of her before vanishing again, and she nearly begins crying again because she’s so lucky to have these women as friends, who are so willing to take care of her and have never once judged her for her relationship with Jaime, not once.

“You did it, then,” Margaery says softly, reaching across the table to take her hand. It’s not a question—she wouldn’t have reacted nearly as badly to the initial question if she hadn’t done it, and they all know it. “I’m sorry, Brienne. I can’t imagine how hard it was for you to do.”

“Why do we have to _feel_ things?” she whispers, staring at her hands, one clasped with Margaery’s and the other curled around the mug as if she’s trying to absorb the warmth from it. “Why can’t we just go through life without caring about other people? It would be so much easier that way, if we didn’t have to feel.”

Arianne wraps an arm around her shoulders, and Brienne leans into her, suddenly feeling very small and tired. “Would life really be worth living if we didn’t love, if we didn’t care for the people around us? It hurts to lose someone, I won’t deny that, but to have them, to know them even for a brief period of time, is it not worth it? Do you really want to give up the joy and all the good moments that come with love because of one heartbreak?”

She sighs, shaking her head. No, she doesn’t want to give it up, not really. This hurts so much now, but it’s not enough to make her regret Jaime, make her regret the time they spent together. It’s not enough to regret laughing with him as he poked fun at the contestants on that terrible cooking show they couldn’t stop watching, not enough to regret the brilliant smile that lit up his face every time he saw her, not enough to regret falling into bed with him again and again and again. She already knows she’ll treasure those memories for the rest of her life, even with the pain of knowing from the beginning it was never going to last.

“Good,” Arianne says quietly. “This will pass, Brienne. It’ll hurt for a long time, but eventually you’ll move on, find someone else who makes you just as happy, and this will all just be a memory.”

“Or,” Margaery adds, squeezing Brienne’s hand gently, “maybe someday you’ll meet Jaime again, when things are better and you don’t have to choose between your cause and your heart, and you can go out for a coffee, catch up, and get tangled up with him all over again, but this time without any complications. It sounds crazy, but it’s not impossible. You just have to believe that this was worth it.”

“It was,” Brienne admits in a choked voice. “It absolutely was worth it.”

Her two friends exchange looks over her head before Margaery smiles at her, soft and kind and very unlike her usual sharp manner. “Then take this time to mourn,” she tells Brienne while Arianne nods along. “Take tonight for yourself, and then focus on the future tomorrow, or the day after if you still feel like shit. None of us will blame you for doing so. You’ve had the hardest choice to make out of us all.”

“Thank you,” Brienne tells them both, wiping at her eyes and straightening in her seat. “You’ve been such good friends, better than I deserve.”

Arianne shakes her head, but doesn’t say anything, just pulls Brienne into another embrace, and she lets her head fall against the other woman’s shoulder and lets herself mourn as Margaery told her to, lets herself weep a little longer over the knowledge that she’s leaving Jaime behind as a part of her past, never to see him again, over the fact that she tore her heart in two when she walked away and she doesn’t know if she’ll ever see it repaired again, over the fact that she finally let herself be happy for once only to have it painfully ripped away from her when everything became far too complicated for her to bear any longer.

**Author's Note:**

> Arianne's 'brienne honey no' was pretty much my mood when writing this one tbh. you don't have to do this, brienne! it's not going to make this easier for you, and he's not going to move past this as quickly as you think! but poor brienne doesn't know that, so we get to suffer together instead. 
> 
> I would love to say I know when the next instalment of this will be out, but I haven't written it yet so I really don't. uni is kind of slowing down as we near exam season, but nano is also doing a number on me so my ability to predict what I will write and when I will write it is pretty much non-existent at present. it WILL come eventually, though. probably before December, though I make no guarantees.


End file.
